Stop us if you’ve heard this one. Federal prosecutors no longer need Apple’s assistance in unlocking an iPhone in a Brooklyn drug case, as investigators have found a way to do so themselves. It’s the second major case recently where the government has attempted to demand Apple’s help but, before a judge granted the government’s request, the Justice Department managed to unlock the iPhone in question. . . .

So you’ve grown tired of Apple’s walled garden of apps and the iron grip it maintains over the iOS platform. Well, the freedom of Android welcomes you with open arms, but don’t forget to bring your data along for the ride!

Apple doesn’t make it particularly easy to move your data from iOS to Android—it’s more interested in moving people in the other direction. Still, with just a few tools and some patience, you can be up and running on Android without missing a beat. . . .

Apple’s operating system’s menu bar is truly old school; it’s been around for as long as there have been Macintoshes. The menu bar is extensible, though some users may not realize just how much, so we’ll show you the many ways you can add functionality to it.

If you have ever heard anyone use the phrase ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’ then they could have been very well talking about Apple’s menu bar.

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The menu bar can be extended with a wide array of clickable icons for quick access to system preferences.

Today, the menu bar lets you add all kinds of extra functionality to it. You can easily check your Mac’s energy status (particularly helpful if you’re using a laptop), or you can start Time Machine backups, or log into another account with fast user switching, etc.

In fact, many of the System Preferences have icons you can add, and many applications will also use the menu bar so users have convenient access to features and functions.

In this article, we’re going to show and talk about all the different things you can add to the menu bar using only what you’ll find in the system preferences. This includes not only the things we’ve already mentioned, but all the other preference menu bar items we could find. . . .

Apple said Monday it was ‘actively investigating’ the violation of several of its iCloud accounts, in which revealing photos and videos of prominent Hollywood actresses were taken and posted all over the Web.

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Security experts said the hacking and theft of revealing pictures from the Apple iCloud accounts of a few celebrities might have been prevented if those affected had enabled two-factor authentication on their accounts.

Apple hasn’t yet said anything definitive about how the attacks were carried out, but security researchers at the security firm FireEye, examined the evidence that has emerged so far, and said it appears to have been a fairly straightforward attack. That said, it is also one that could have been thwarted had some additional steps to secure the targeted accounts been taken.

That additional step is known as two-factor authentication. Apple calls it ‘two-step verification,’ although it doesn’t work very hard to tell people about it, said Darien Kindlund, director of threat research at FireEye.

‘In general Apple has been a little late to the game in offering this kind of protection, and doesn’t advertise it,’ he said. ‘You have to dig through the support articles to find it.’

When enabled, two-factor authentication requires users to enter a numerical code that is sent to their phone or another device, in addition to using their regular password. Since the number constantly changes, it makes it much more difficult for attackers to gain access the account, even if they know the password.

Assuming the compromised accounts were running without the two-step option turned on, it would then have been relatively easy for the attacker to gain access to the accounts.

As The Next Web reported earlier today the attack may be linked to software on GitHub called iBrute that is capable of carrying out automated brute-force attacks against iCloud accounts. In this scenario, an attacker simply guesses a password again and again until they succeed. While tedious and time-consuming for a person, it’s a simple and infinitely faster process for a computer.

The as-yet unknown attacker had one other thing going for him: Apple allows an unlimited number of password guesses. Normally, systems limit the number of times someone can try to log in to a system with an incorrect password before the account is locked down entirely. Apple has since fixed that aspect of the vulnerability.

‘The attackers never should have been allowed to make an unlimited number of guesses,’ Kindlund said. . . . [Emphasis added.]

In this version of Jeff Richardson’s “In the news,” we get a wide variety of iPhone and iPad candy. There is information about Apple’s new partnership with IBM, smart watches, making the most of Wi-Fi on an iPhone or iPad, apps to track billable hours and listen to podcasts, the iStick – a new thumb drive with a USB and Lightning connector to transfer files between a computer and an iPad without having to use a cloud (a bit pricey for my budget), and Touch ID – a fingerprint scanner for iPhone 5s.

For those of you already in football mode, Jeff shows us how to subscribe to NFL Sunday Ticket from any iOS device for $200.

If you are a hiker, you may be interested in a new device that lets you connect to another iPhone or Android device up to 50 miles away even when there is no cell or Wi-Fi Service. You may think of other ways this kind of thing would be handy. It is nice when traveling abroad because it will allow you to remain in touch with another GoTenna user without having to pay the high international cell roaming fees.

If you think that no one hears you, send an email to Apple COE Tim Cook. Someone sent an email about the quality of the music played while waiting on hold with Apple. Mr. Cook read the email, and fixed it. -CCE

It really is the iPhone’s fault. Yes, Apple is to blame for designing the most desirable piece of technology of the last decade. So desirable, in fact, that employees of all stripes requested (and, often, begged) their IT departments to toss the increasingly-‘corporate’ Blackberry out the window and allow the use of their personal iPhones for corporate emails and calls. As a result, we have been living in the age of ‘Bring Your Own Device’ where employees use a single personal mobile phone (or tablet) for both their personal email, texting, and social media while also using it for work email, word processing, and other enterprise applications.

Before the Bring Your Own Device era, a company’s greatest out-of-office security concern was an employee who left a briefcase in a taxi. Today, the worry is an employee misplacing a device the size of wallet containing almost limitless amounts of data that criminals or hackers would easily and quickly exploit if given the chance. Clearly, there is an obvious financial motivation for all businesses to protect their own or customer’s sensitive data.

However, lawyers face particular ethical consequences if they fail to take reasonable efforts to either investigate the technologies that they implement or protect their client’s confidential information. . . .

We here at the contracts prof blog are frequently in a lather over adhesive contracts. Terms of use run amok, arbitration clauses are routinely enforced, and non-compete clauses prevent teenagers from seeking gainful employment. Yet, where’s the outrage from other quarters? One problem, as John Oliver notes in this hilarious (and effective) bit on net neutrality, is that some things are just too BORING to grab consumers’ attention. Towards the end of the clip (about 10:10), he states this truth: ‘If you want to do something evil, put it inside something boring.’ He speculates that Apple could put the entire text of Mein Kampf inside its user agreement and we would just hit ‘Agree.’ . . . .

Despite the fact that every major Internet provider has added some kind of encryption to its services over the past year, tracking your online traffic is easier than you think.

And you don’t have to be the target of the hacker or the NSA for your traffic to be intercepted. There is a hole in mobile security that could make tens of millions of Americans vulnerable.

Unsecure Wi-Fi networks have been a well-known vulnerability in the tech industry for years. They can let even the most unsophisticated hacker capture your traffic and possibly steal your identity. . . .

Apple was dealt a blow in its second major patent-infringement lawsuit against Samsung when a Silicon Valley jury awarded the iPhone maker damages of just US$119.65 million for Samsung’s infringement of several of its smartphone patents.

Apple had requested $2.2 billion in damages.

The decision by the eight-person jury came at the end of the third full day of deliberations. . . .

Apple releases minor security updates for the iPhone and iPad from time to time. When folks ask me if they should upgrade, I virtually always say yes. Why not have an iPhone that is more secure, and less likely to be hacked by bad guys? So this past Friday afternoon when Apple released iOS 7.0.6 and said that it was a security update, I updated my devices but otherwise did not think much of it. (And no, you did not miss an update if, like me, you went from iOS 7.0.4 to 7.0.6; 7.0.5 was only released for iPhones sold in China.)

But over the weekend, there were two posts about this update by John Gruber of Daring Fireball (Post 1, Post 2) that I thought were pretty interesting. According to PRISM documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the NSA gained the ability to intercept encrypted iPhone traffic in October of 2012, and that’s apparently right after the bug fixed by iOS 7.0.6 was introduced. As Gruber notes, this could mean all sorts of things. It could mean that someone at Apple intentionally added a backdoor for the NSA. Or it could mean that someone at Apple made a simple coding mistake but the NSA found out about it and exploited it.

Or it could just be a big coincidence, but there is at least a chance that Apple has now found and fixed a security bug that had been exploited by the NSA. . . .

Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG) say they’re tired of being slapped with baseless patent suits that cost them millions in legal fees. Now they’re asking the U.S. Supreme Court to let them hit back. The two are leading a group of companies urging the court to make it easier for businesses to recover legal costs when they win a patent infringement suit. In two cases to be argued this month, the justices will hear them out.

More than 100,000 businesses were threatened in 2012 by ‘patent assertion entities.’ Often derided as patent trolls, these companies get most of their revenue from licensing patents and from suing other companies for infringement. They filed 19 percent of all patent lawsuits from 2007 to 2011, according to the Government Accountability Office. . . .

Cell phone theft is a growing problem, but a group of California lawmakers think they have a solution.

State Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) on Friday is expected to introduce legislation requiring all smartphones and tablets sold in the state to contain a so-called “kill switch,” which would render the device inoperable if it was lost or stolen. The bill, which is sponsored by San Francisco Attorney General George Gascón, would apply to any device sold after Jan. 1, 2015. . . .

With the new year and new resolutions being made, this is the perfect time to consider digital apps to work with your iPad. There does not seem to be a single place that has organized the different apps available into a one stop site. This is my attempt to do so.

Whether you are a lawyer, law student or work for a law firm, perhaps you have promised yourself that you will go more digital and be more paperless. If so, consider the apps below to help you practice law better with your iPad.

Friday is the deadline for corporate suppliers of the world’s biggest consumer—the U.S. government—to have a say in new regulations aimed at ending indentured servitude overseas. . . . The President’s dictate is unequivocal on one key point: If a company wants to keep the government as a customer, it must stop hiring overseas workers who had to buy their jobs.

You read that right: Workers actually buy jobs. As Bloomberg Businessweek reported in November, foreign workers recruited from some of Asia’s poorest corners often go deep into debt to pay brokers for a crack at jobs on consumer-electronics assembly lines. These factories are in Malaysia and other countries that rely almost exclusively on migrant labor for production. For years Apple has ordered its suppliers to keep such fees below one-months’ net pay at a factory, but its audits last year turned up $6.4 million in overcharges.

If you work at a desk and you are looking for a useful accessory for your iPhone 5 or iPhone 5s — or a gift for someone else who uses one — and if you don’t use a case with your iPhone, I’m a big fan of the iPhone 5s Dock made by Apple. Back in 2008, I reviewed the iPhone 3G Dock. In 2010 I reviewed the iPhone 4 Dock and the Apple Universal Dock. In September of 2013, Apple released its first dock with a Lightning connector, the iPhone 5s Dock. I bought it as soon as it came out and I’ve been using it for about two months. It works great with my iPhone 5s, and note that despite the name, it also works with the iPhone 5 since the two iPhones are the same size.

If my third-generation iPad and my iPad mini had a baby, and if the proud parents were lucky enough to realize the dream shared by all parents that their child be even smarter than they are, the result would be the iPad Air. I’ve been using an iPad Air extensively for the last three days, and it truly combines the best features of the iPad and the iPad mini, plus offers more. This is an amazing product, and it is hard for me to imagine any lawyer not finding a lot to love about the iPad Air.